CTE Centrum för tillämpad etik Linköpings Universitet AN UNDERSTANDING OF COMMON MORALITY Bhaskarjit Neog Master’s Thesis Ethiek Instituut van de Universiteit Utrecht Supervisors: Dr. Mariëtte van den Hoven and Dr. Marcel Verweij …in loving memory of my Father 2 Acknowledgments First I would like to acknowledge the immense support and guidance that I received from my thesis supervisor Dr. Mariëtte van den Hoven. She has been a constant inspiration for me in formulating the skeleton of this work. Her expertise in this particular field has not only just opened my eyes but also given me enormous insights in materializing many basic points. I appreciate her constructive criticisms and painstaking approach in supervising this work. My deepest regards and gratitude goes to Dr. Marcel Verweij whose intellectual charity and friendly disposition helped me a lot in completing this work. He took the pain of supervising the initial part of this thesis. I extend my heartiest thanks to him. I am grateful to Dr. Gijs van Donselaar for arranging and programming our peer group’s meetings. His instant but thoughtful comments in our group meetings helped me a lot in conceptualizing many fundamental things. I have also greatly benefited from Prof. Robert Heeger’s thoughtful comments and authentic remarks on this particular area. His scholarly charity and fatherly disposition were encouraging, challenging and legendary. I am sincerely thankful to him. I am deeply grateful to my teacher Prof. Bijoy H. Boruah, from India, who has always been my friend, philosopher, and guide in every step of my life. I extend my heartiest thanks to him. In Utrecht, I enjoyed the beautiful companionship of Jelte, Azam, Ramon, Elisa, Jan, Fouzia, Terry, and Gift. To all of them I say a million of thanks. Bhaskarjit Neog th Date: 19 June, 2007 Universiteit Utrecht 3 Contents Chapter I Common Morality 1.0 General Introduction 5 1.1 A Fresh Start 6 1.2 What is Common Morality or Commonsense Morality 8 1.3 Some Clarifications 11 1.4 Core of the Work 12 1.5 Scope and Methodology of the Work 13 Chapter II Common Morality: Gert and Beauchamp 2.0 Introduction 15 2.1 Gert’s Thesis 15 2.2 Moral System 17 2.3 Moral Rules, Ideals, and the Two Step Procedure 17 2.4 Justification of Common Morality 18 2.5 Gert and Common Morality 19 2.6 Beauchamp’s Thesis 22 2.7 Components of the Common Morality 23 2.8 Beauchamp and Common Morality 23 2.9 Concluding Remarks 25 Chapter III Problems with the Formalistic Interpretation 3.0 Introduction 27 3.1 Against Abstract Norms 27 3.2 Against Universalism 30 3.3 Changing Morality 33 3.4 Concluding Remarks 34 Chapter IV Local Common Morality 4.0 Introduction 36 4.1 Common Morality versus Particular Moralities 36 4.2 Two Senses of Common Morality 37 4.3 A Different Approach 40 4.4 Relevance of Local Common Morality 44 4.5 Concluding Remarks 46 Chapter V Conclusion 47 References 50 4 Chapter I The most powerful lessons about ethics and morality do not come from school discussions or classes in character building. They come from family life where people treat one another with respect, consideration, and love .- Neil Kurshan Common Morality 1.0 General Introduction In our day to day human social intercourse we very often use the phrase ‘common sense’. Our common parlance often includes reference to common sense in such ways as: ‘what does your common sense say?’, ‘use your own common sense’, ‘from the common sense point of view …’ and so on. What is it that we refer to when we use this particular phrase? How does a human agent standardly behave in affirmatively responding to a call of common sense by another human agent? And what is the relevance of using this phrase in ordinary human intercourse? A philosopher might be initially interested to ask these questions when she wants to analyze the phrase ‘common sense’. 1 Probably a brief answer to all these questions would involve defining ‘commonsense’ in terms of our natural understanding of matters of life and the world. And this natural understanding is underpinned by our ordinary moral beliefs which we share with each other as normal human beings. In the history of moral philosophy, there has been a moderately fashionable tendency of using the phrase ‘common morality’ or ‘commonsense morality’ 2 to refer to our ordinary values and norms. Most of the philosophers tend to use it when they compare or contrast it with the implications of ethical theories for genuine understanding of moral facts. They believe that without having any reference to what common people think, believe and practice, it is preposterous to construct a complete set of abstract norms 1 Here I am not referring to the ‘philosophy of commonsense’. I am not talking about the traditional discussions of commonsensism which is found in the works of Locke, Moore and others. 2 Here I will be using both ‘commonsense morality’ and ‘common morality’ interchangeably. From the writings of Gert as well as of Beauchamp, it becomes clear that though the theories (Beauchamp?) are named as ‘common morality’, the referent has always been mentioned as common morality which is similar to the phrase ‘commonsense morality’. 5 and postulate them as relevant to practical life. Theories must need to fulfill the demands of common reality even though they are meant to enunciate sacrosanct normative principles governing ethical life. Many philosophers even insist on the claim that a moral theory should always begin its journey by reflecting on the existing common norms and values. The real deal of formulating normative principles, according to them, should always arise from the ordinary belief system. Despite the concurrence of attitudes on founding ethical theory in commonsensical belief systems, there had not been any serious attempt, until two decades ago, to project this attitude systematically as the basis of an independent philosophical thought. Fortunately, a handful of moral philosophers now seem to be interested to take this position quite seriously. They find this to be the theoretical springboard for interpreting many practical ethical problems, e.g. problems of biomedical ethics, computing ethics and so on. Bernard Gert, Tom Beauchamp, James Childress, Charles Culver and Danner Clouser are some of the prominent thinkers who are now intent on theoretically defending the ethical content of common beliefs, or the commonsensical intuitions ingrained in ethical beliefs. They perceive the fact that all humans—at least those who are serious about morality—have an awareness of certain moral norms that are cognized by commonsensical intuition. Examples of such norms are: there is something wrong in actions like lying, breaking promises, or killing innocent human and nonhuman animals. These purportedly shared perceptions, according to them, surprisingly form a kind of moral system that claims an authenticity for every human society. 1.1 A Fresh Start Morality is a complex phenomenon. It is more complex than what it appears to be from the vantage point of celebrated moral theories, whether it is Deontology, Utilitarianism, or Social-Contract theory. It is difficult to understand why the edifice of morality has to be erected upon an allegedly single master principle, while its root has already been traced to a diverse and diffuse set of principles that underlie our common beliefs and attitudes. It cannot be denied that commonsense moral intuitions, buried in these beliefs and attitudes, constitute the bedrock of human practice. No moral theory can therefore be justified if it is not geared to grappling with the contents of the bedrock. And yet, it is 6 surprising that most standard ethical theories are geared to the formulation of a certain formal principle of moral reasoning authorized to be the overriding determinant of what is morally right or wrong. It therefore is unsurprising that the application of the monolithic principle to morally problematic actual cases of life is often found to be impractical or counterintuitive. Critical and realistic examination of these theories reveals to us that, except a few occasional citations of ideas of common morality, they maintain an academic distance from the density of practical moral decision-making contexts of life. Moral theories are put forward to present a clear and comprehensive reflective account of our moral life. The main practical aim of a moral theory is to discover a decision procedure that can be used to guide correct moral reasoning about matters of concern. By formulating such a decision procedure they are supposed to discover those underlying features of action, persons, and other items of moral evaluation that make them right or wrong, good or bad. 3 Many revised versions of standard moral theories are even proposed to resolve certain dilemmatic conditions of our human moral predicament. But it is difficult to find any theory which is free from non-negligible flaws. The history of moral thought bears testimony to several such theories. If one theory overlooks the identity of persons, another theory strikingly neglects their separateness.4 If one leaves everything to the decision of the moral agent, the other takes all that away by demanding too much. While Kant says that morality requires rationality, Mill says it is all about impartiality and the consequence of our action. While the negative consequentialists say that morality is more concerned with lessening harm than promoting good, the social contract theorists say that morality must be acceptable to all rational agents. In such a confusing scenario how would we know which one is right? The tragic reality of the situation is that neither of them is successful in smoothly presenting the common understandings of the moral problems.